Wine Trails: Champagne houses to visit

See which Champagne houses to visit on your wine holiday, taken from Lonely Planet's new book Wine Trails.Champagne E BarnautThe
bustling village of Bouzy is unique, since many winegrowers here exercise their right to make the non-bubbly Bouzy Rouge, a PinotNoir that is expensive because, as one grizzled vigneron moaned,
‘we could be making a lot more money by selling the grapes for Champagne!’ Philippe Barnaut is a fifth-generation winemaker with strong ideas: ‘People used to talk always about Le Champagne as a
homogenous product, but what interests me is the diversity of Champagne. I vinify each parcel of each terroir separately before moving on to the crucial assemblage. Twenty years ago I was treated
as a heretic, but now everyone is following this like a new fashion.’ Philippe has taken the daring step, for a Champagne producer, of opening an Aladdin’s-cave store for wine tourists in an
ancient house that sits above four floors of cellars. Apart from offering tastings of his outstanding range of Champagne, the rustic wooden-fronted boutique stocks delicious regional foodie
specialities – wild-boar pâté, lentils, mustard from Reims – and a kaleidoscope of wine gadgets.